


A Taste of Freedom

by avoidingavoidance



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Multi, essentially this is just finn being grossly enamored with poe and rey, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 01:31:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5608663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidingavoidance/pseuds/avoidingavoidance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Finn discovers that there are a dozen different kinds of freedom, and not all of them are palatable. </p>
<p>Some are, though. Some really are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Taste of Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com) but i usually write attack on titan
> 
> also idk why they end up where they do lmfao just pretend the last part happens after rey comes back from spoiler island all buff and powerful to take her boyfriends on adventures

Stormtrooper helmets filter smoke out of the air. 

They also filter out hope, optimism, and even the most microscopic particle that may serve to breathe life into free thought.

FN-2187 has never known what freedom tastes like, but he imagines it tastes... rich. Full of life. So much more fulfilling, more satisfying than any combination of tasteless rations the First Order cycles through.

He catches his first glimpse of the wild shining in Poe’s defiant black eyes, dark and endless and absolutely magnetic, even through the shaded visor of his helmet.

For the first time in recent memory, the whisper of an untrained thought rises from the depths of his heavily-conditioned mind:

_I can do this._

\--

The moment FN-2187 feels the jarring yank of the tie fighter’s steel tether keeping them restrained, stomping out the nascent sparks of his rebellion, his ears are flooded with the screech of groaning metal and the sudden thunder of his own quickening pulse.

Before the fighter has even stopped spinning from the inertia, though, before the screech and thunder have even started to fade, another sound overpowers them both.

“I can fix that!”

Poe’s voice, rapid and blindly confident, knocks aside the weight beginning to press down on FN-2187’s chest, pushes away the reaching grasp of the First Order that still lives inside his armor, and the taste of the ventilation, of the dry air conditioning fills his mouth again.

Poe can fix this, and he does, and FN-2187 wants to kiss him for helping him break free.

Freedom tastes like sand and burning jet fuel and sudden isolation, and FN-2187—no, _Finn_ —is devastated by its dry, hot cruelty.

\--

Finn is facing death for the fifth time in the last five minutes. 

Chewie is a wildly unpleasant patient, and he smells like burnt hair and engine grease, and his furry hands seem much faster than they have any right to be when they’re flying at Finn’s face.

There’s a lot of technobabble coming from the Falcon’s cockpit. Rey and Han finishing each other’s sentences, talking shields and flight and compressors too fast for Finn to even focus on, let alone pick apart enough to understand.

It reminds him of Poe, that whip-smart, quickfire confidence, and his stomach sinks a little.

Sensing distraction, Chewie lunges again, and as Finn is fighting for his life for the sixth time, something in the cockpit explodes. The smell of fire and lightning overpowers the smell of distressed wookie, and just about everything else shortly after.

“I can fix that!”

Those words cut through the smoke. The same steady tone, the same confidence, not blind now but clear as daylight. Poe’s words in Rey’s voice. Rey’s resourceful brilliance taking them out of Finn’s head and making them her own. Making them shiny and new.

Chewie lets go of Finn’s head, and the smell of distressed wookie comes back through the fog of white noise that could easily be either panic or oxygen deprivation.

Rey can fix this, and she does, and freedom becomes a living, breathing possibility once more.

Freedom tastes like chilly winter air and crushed, trampled evergreen trees, with the bitter aftertaste of failure coming soon after.

\--

He’s not even sure how it happened this time.

They’d been fleeing somewhere through the Outer Rim, the three of them crammed into an undersized freighter that Rey had hotwired like she’d known the engine her entire life and that Poe had taken to lightspeed in the most skillful, stressful way possible, all while Finn kept watch and handed over tools and felt wildly under-prepared for this adventure.

While they’re at lightspeed, standing in the closet-sized cargo bay and debating the ethics of keeping the goods—which had been stolen several times over even before they stole it—something happens. Something always happens.

There’s a deep, overwhelming rumble, and the floor of the freighter heaves sharply upward, then twitches slightly to the left, then careens wildly to the right, leaving all three of them flying ass over elbows into the walls and the crates and the ceiling. Abrupt pain knocks Finn in the mouth, then terrifyingly low in the gut, then again in the mouth, before the flickering lights stabilize and he finds himself sprawled on the floor in the corner with both Poe and Rey piled on top of him.

With a pained huff, Rey drops her forehead onto Finn’s shoulder, grumbling something about calibrations and stabilization algorithms. Finn chooses to rest his spinning head against the cold steel wall instead of asking her to clarify.

Once he’s given his own rattled head a good shake, Poe turns to look at Finn, his dark eyes concerned despite the crooked grin already spreading over his face, and he reaches up to rub his warm, calloused thumb over Finn’s throbbing lower lip. “Sorry, bud, you okay?”

“Oh yeah,” Finn groans in response, pouting against Poe’s thumb even as his fingers curve gently over the back of Rey’s head, threading between her wildly mussed buns as if searching for any sort of hurt. “I’m doing just great.”

Poe opens his mouth to reply, the playful twinkle in his eye most likely foretelling a bad pun, but he’s interrupted by the lights flickering again, and then by a sudden, deafening _snap_. The now-familiar tang of sparks and smoke slams into Finn’s nose and mouth, and his chest tightens purely on instinct at the continuing sounds of fizzling, crackling electricity doing something it’s not supposed to.

Before Finn even has the chance to fully register the acid burn of anxiety in his throat, Poe and Rey both bolt upright and whip their heads toward the cramped cockpit, and two voices rise together to overrule the threat of flames.

“I can fix that!”

Both of them. Simultaneously. The same quick confidence, the same instantaneous reaction to the sharp stink of copper smoke.

They stare at each other. A beat passes, a shaky, scary, breaking-freighter beat, before Poe _beams_ at Rey like the sun in the sky, bright and optimistic and excited. Rey mirrors the expression perfectly, her thin lips easily forming Poe’s blinding can-do bravado, taking it and making it her own, before she stands and hauls Poe up from Finn’s lap.

They run to fix it, and Finn knows they will. They can do it. 

He lets himself stay sprawled in his corner for a moment longer, every trembling part of him touching something blessedly solid, and freedom tastes like cool cargo air, Rey’s hair (from when the back of her head had become suddenly acquainted with Finn’s mouth), and Poe’s new jacket (from when his elbow had heard the good news about Finn’s friendly mouth).

Finn’s not entirely sure what his heart is doing in his chest, but it’s warm, steady, and _awfully_ exciting.


End file.
